The ESLAS Annual Congress that was about to take place In June in Berlin, has been postponed for the same place, but most probably the beginning of November!!

We shall keep you posted! Sorry for the inconvenience.

Dear Friends of ESLAS!

First of all, may we wish you the Happiest and Healthiest of New Years for 2016! We thought it appropriate to write to you at this turning of the old year to the new, and share some thoughts on 2015, and most importantly, some aspirations for 2016 to ensure this will be a pivotal year for ESLAS: of course as you, dear members, are ESLAS, we want to make sure that 2016 is an important year for you as the keystone of our Society.

Looking back, 2015 was recognised by the United Nations as the International Year of Light, and at the high point in the 2015 ESLAS calendar as part of the IYOL celebrations we saw the ELA-convened meeting in Athens, “Laser and Aesthetic Europe 2015” hosted by ESLAS with the cooperation of DALA. This superb event was held from the 25th to the 27th of June in the magnificent Royal Olympic Hotel and overseen by the inimitable Parthenon, perched on the majestic Acropolis. Despite the severe attrition we suffered from the world-wide economic crisis and the fiscal uncertainty due to the rather unstable political situation in Greece at that time, the meeting was without a doubt an academic and a social success, and we must pay tribute here to the hard and selfless work of our host president, Dr Vakis Kontoes, backed up by the team at K Provoli, the indefatigable congress organising body.

We were able to offer a one-day series of top-class precongress courses, which went a long way to getting us official recognition for continuing medical education credits, followed by a very full program of high scientific quality. Although registered attendees were sadly well below what we had hoped for, all those who did attend were more than extremely satisfied with all aspects of the event. If you were one of those who missed our meeting in 2015, you really missed out on a splendid event. Make sure it doesn’t happen again this year!

ESLAS was represented during the 1st International Society of Regenerative Medicine and Surgery (ISRMS) Congress (12 & 15-16 May 2015, Bucharest) by our President Dr. Dana Jianu through the dedicated section: “LASER and Physics Research” in partnership with the Romanian Society of Lasers in Medicine and Biology and the surgical workshop “Cervico-facial rejuvenation with enriched fat graft, LASER CO2 resurfacing, lipolysis and PRP” performed by Assoc. Prof. Dr Dana Jianu and her team. ESLAS has also a constant presence on the ISRMS and RASS (Romanian Aesthetic Surgery Society) website through the use of the ESLAS logo and a link to the ESLAS website.

However, like Janus, the Roman God who gives his name to January, we are able not only to look back at the old year, but to gaze expectantly into the future for what is in store for us in 2016. The first thing we can look forward to is the potential participation of ESLAS as an overseeing and regulatory body in a series of workshops being planned in Dubai currently under consideration by the Dubai Health Authority (DHA). The situation is under investigation by the ESLAS Board, and our Honorary Presidents, Drs Trelles and Kontoes who are very familiar with the Dubai medical landscape, have made an on-site visit to work out with the interested parties how best to proceed. This is an exciting initiative which was proposed some time ago, but which fell through then for a number of reasons. The current initiative looks strong and hopeful, however, so we will be keeping you well-informed.

Of course, the “jewel in our crown” for 2016 will be our annual meeting which will once again be part of the ELA-sponsored event: Laser & Aesthetics Europe 2016, planned for 9-11 of June in the beautiful city of Berlin, under the host presidency of Dr Carsten Phillips. As more details become available, they will be posted on our website.

Another important project for ESLAS, proposed for September 2016, is to organize a scientific and practical event in partnership with the Romanian Medical Association (www.amrorg.ro) - President Prof. C. Ionescu-Tirgoviste and the Bulgarian Dermatological Society (www.bg-derm.org, Chairman Professor Dr. Nikolay Tsankov Konstantinov), together with Prof. Sorin Tiplica and Dr. Victor Gabriel Clatici – our ESLAS Romanian representative. Further details on this project will be announced on our ESLAS website.

By far the most important task for us this year is to seek to increase ESLAS membership. A number of ways have been considered. First, we believe it is vitally important to attract younger members into the Society, and one way to achieve this would be to give recognition to the work of young residents. Second, we believe that we should encourage membership from specialities beyond plastic and reconstructive surgery. When ESLAS was first formed, the situation regarding speciality recognition and specialist-specific boundaries was more rigid: whether this was a good or bad thing is not now important. As time has moved on, so have the borders between specialists and specialities become more flexible, an example being the much greater interaction between dermatologists and plastic surgeons. There is a large body of dermatologists using the laser in cosmetic and aesthetic procedures, so they would be a potential pool from which to recruit new ESLAS members. Laser dentistry is another possible burgeoning speciality from which we could recruit new blood for ESLAS. A third avenue would be to look at emerging surgical groups in countries like Romania, where political changes have led to the emergence of a new generation of medical professionals.

To that end, it has been proposed that ESLAS have a dedicated regional representative in such countries, and this has in fact been implemented in Romania under the eagle eye of Dr Dana Jianu, our ESLAS President in person of Dr. Victor Gabriel Clatici, editor-in-chief of Romanian Journal of Clinical and Experimental Dermatology (ROJCED) where ESLAS is a constant presence, including ESLAS auspices on the cover page (from February 2016) that will increase ESLAS visibility.

Finally for this year’s highlights, the Society has adopted the journal Laser Therapy as our official Journal (www.jmll.co.jp/lasertherapy/ ). Laser Therapy is an internationallyrecognised, peer-reviewed and PubMed-indexed organ appearing quarterly with a scope covering all aspects of laser-, light- and energy-based medicine in a pan-speciality manner. As part of your membership fees, we are currently in negotiations with the journal editorial and management team to send the journal to Members in Good Standing as an eJournal in PDF format. Once these talks have concluded, past volumes of the journal corresponding to paid-up memberships for the last 2 years will be sent out. The journal welcomes orginal articles, brief communications and letters to the editor on any and all aspects of laser and light in surgery and medicine. The ESLAS Secretary-General, Dr Glen Calderhead was instrumental in the founding of the journal in 1988, and sits on the International Editorial Board. He assures us that special consideration will be given to articles from ESLAS members. The journal offers a very swift turn-around from acceptance to publication of from 3 to 6 months, and is therefore offers authors one of the fastest times to see their article in print.

So, dear members, we urge you first of all to renew your membership for 2016! That would make our Treasurer and Membership Secretary, Dr Spiros Vlachos, very happy. Second, please urge as many of your colleagues as possible to consider ESLAS membership in light of the exciting plans for this year. Third, if you know of any young residents doing good work, please bring them to our attention so their expertise can be acknowledged. Fourth, submit your work as articles to our official journal, Laser Therapy. Once again, may 2016 be for you and for us all in ESLAS, a sterling and exciting year!

On behalf of the entire ESLAS Board, and our Honorary Presidents, we remain,